


Child of the Gods

by JohnAmendAll



Category: Doctor Who (1963), The Hub - James Schmitz
Genre: Awesome Vicki Pallister, Classic Who companions are awesome, Gen, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-16
Updated: 2011-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-14 19:56:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/152887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JohnAmendAll/pseuds/JohnAmendAll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vicki took the name Cressida, married Troilus, and made a life for herself with the refugees of fallen Troy. But now a man has come among them who claims to be a demigod, and he's killing anyone who gets in his way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> An encounter between Vicki, from the First Doctor's era, and the time-travelling race seen in [The Winds of Time](http://www.webscription.net/10.1125/Baen/0671319841/0671319841___5.htm) by James H. Schmitz.

There were perhaps half-a-dozen men in the party, wearing rough homespun and clutching straw hats in their hands. They kept their eyes low, as was the custom, but stole furtive glances at the decorated walls and floor. This house was but a pale echo of vanished Troy, but compared to the farmsteads and byres where these men spent their days, it must represent unparalleled sophistication.

The handmaiden who had conducted the men in came to a halt.

"My lady," she said. "These men seek an audience."

Cressida, Princess of the Trojans, bowed her head gravely.

"I imagine you'd have preferred to speak to the Queen, or to my husband," she said. "But since they're away on campaign, that leaves me. So tell me: What can I do for you?"

One of the farmers took a step forward.

"My lady," he said, trembling.

Cressida gave him a bright smile. "Go on," she said. "What's your name?"

"My name is Pernymus, may it please your ladyship. And we come to seek your help. There are strange things happening near our farms. A man has come among us, who claims to be a son of the gods."

 _Ah._ Cressida knew that among the Trojan exiles, many considered her to be of divine parentage. She'd heard some of the rumours — that her presence in the city brought luck, cured diseases, protected their people from enemies. They'd consider her to be the local expert on demigods. They'd probably look on her to protect them.

The problem, of course, was that she was 100% mortal.

"And what has this man been doing?" she asked.

"My lady, I have seen him but once. But we fear that others have met him, and have vanished from this earth. He has made his home in a cave, on Straton's land; and for six days, nobody has seen Straton, or his wife, or his oxen. Adrastos set out for the cave, to see what he could learn; he never returned."

"You say you saw him once. What was he doing then?"

"We saw him out on the road, and went to ask him what had happened to Straton and his wife. Is that not so, brothers?" He looked around his colleagues for support. "He would not answer. So Dionymus said that we would not let him leave until he had spoken. He laughed, and stretched out his hand, and Dionymus was struck dead by sorcerous fire, as all the men here will testify."

There was a general murmur of agreement.

"Before he departed, he said that he was a child of the gods, and that any of us who raised our hands to him would be treated thus. And that any who approached the cave without his permission would be struck down by an infallible curse."

"I see." Cressida glanced over the group. "Is any more known of this man?"

One of the other farmers spoke. "My son was near the cave at night. He swears that he saw this man, looking up at the stars, and beside him some spirit of the earth."

"What sort of spirit?"

"In the darkness, he saw only a shadow against the stars," the farmer said apologetically. "But that shadow was of a gigantic serpent."

"Very well. Is there anything else I should know?"

There was an uneasy silence.

"Thank you. I shall give the matter my careful consideration." She waved to the handmaiden, who ushered the farmers out. Cressida waited until the girl returned.

"Eumelia, I need to think," she said. "Wait here."

She rose from her chair, and walked along the passageway to the shrine.

⁂

When the Trojans first arrived, the shrine had been a natural cave, lit by a crack in the rock. Stonemasons had smoothed the floor, widened the crack into a shaft, and built the altars, and the feet of the household had polished the stone with daily visits.

Cressida walked, without haste, to one particular altar. In shape, it was unremarkable, a block of stone twice as high as it was wide. The carvings on it were more out of the ordinary. To all the inhabitants of the city bar one, they showed fantastic creatures, never matched in nature. But Cressida, gazing upon them, recognised them for what they were. Daleks. Rills. Zarbi. And, in the centre of the image, surrounded by a stylised design that could have been clouds or flames, was a careful representation of a London Police Telephone Box.

She stood before the altar, listening to the sighing of the air and the occasional drip of water. Somewhere not too far from here was, if reports were to be believed, a son of the gods, a man who could throw fire from his hand, who could kill with a curse, who could summon demons of the earth to dance before him.

And all she had to call upon, apart from a few handmaidens, was a certain amount of education. But she was a Princess. Her husband was relying on her to care for his people, and she was going to care for them. Even if that meant using knowledge that, up to now, she hadn't dared to.

It was time to stop thinking like Cressida, and start thinking like Vicki again.

⁂

It was well past noon, two days after the farmers' embassy had first told Vicki of the visitor in their midst. Now, she had come to see the truth of their stories for herself. She'd wanted to come straight away, but the preparations for her trip had taken time. All told, there were five people with her: her four handmaidens, and Pernymus, who had agreed to act as a guide. She was acutely aware that she was risking their lives as well as her own.

The party came to a halt at the edge of Straton's farmstead. Here, the Trojans' fields gave way to a hill, its sides rocky and bare of vegetation, with a flattish top. At its base, a dark opening gaped.

"This is the place?" Vicki asked.

"It is," Pernymus said. "That is the cave, there."

"Then you may go."

"My lady." He bobbed his head, and hurried away as quickly as possible. Vicki waited until he was out of earshot, then turned to her own handmaidens. They looked terrified out of their wits, but one had to make allowances for their age and education: they were, after all, only girls, and they hadn't had her advantages. Besides, it was better if they didn't look threatening.

"Follow me," she said. "Keep one pace behind me. And if I tell you to do something, do it. Immediately."

She walked, forcing herself not to run, across the ground until she stood before the cave mouth. She glanced behind her, to reassure herself that her handmaidens were present.

"We come in peace," she called.

There was a pause, broken only by the occasional click of stone expanding in the sun's heat, and the rustle of a snake some way away.

After a decent interval, she added "Is anybody there?"

Another pause, and then footsteps came from inside the cave. A tall man emerged. His hair was jet black, his face pale. He was wearing a grey, one-piece jumpsuit, and holding a pistol-like device in his right hand.

"More of you?" he asked, as he came to a halt, a few paces from Vicki. "But I see you have learned the folly of attacking a child of the gods."

Vicki was distantly aware of her handmaidens' shocked reaction. They thought she was a demigoddess, of course. Perhaps they expected her to strike this man down for blasphemy. If so, they'd be disappointed.

"What name shall I call you by?" she asked.

"Korsten." He gave her another look. "Who are you?"

"I am known as Cressida," Vicki said. "I am a Princess of the Trojans. I was told that you had killed people, by means of flame from your hands, and that others who came this way had simply vanished into thin air."

"Then you'll know not to interfere. I don't care if you call yourself the Princess of some rabble of illiterate peasants. I could kill you as easily as I stand here now. Why have you come looking for me?"

Vicki took a deep breath. "I am asking you, politely, to leave. Maybe you were just defending yourself when you killed Dionymus. Perhaps Straton's disappearance was nothing to do with you. But I believe that you could be a threat to my people."

The man laughed, harshly. "What do I care for your country or your people? You have no authority over me, girl. I go where I please, I take the life of anyone I choose, and if I depart that will be nobody's choice but my own." He gestured with his weapon. "Now run along. I'm busy."

"Yes, I thought as much," Vicki said. "I wondered if there was something wrong with your time machine. I mean, that _is_ how you got here, isn't it? And that weapon you're carrying certainly isn't a projectile pistol. It's some kind of energy weapon. I should also point out that at this particular moment, I know more about time travel than anybody else alive on this planet, and I'm quite willing to talk in terms of aliens and spaceships if you'd prefer that to demigods and Apollo's chariot. Shall we talk?"

Korsten, if that was his name, had jumped at the first mention of time travel, and his attention had only increased as Vicki's speech had gone on. Once she had finished, he gave her a long, appraising look.

"And how does a primitive tribal princess know about time travel, aliens and spaceships?" he asked.

"I've seen a few things in my time." She watched him closely. "Do you know of the Daleks?"

His hand twitched, fortunately not enough to set the weapon off.

"I have heard of them," he said. "Like my people, they can ride the Great Current. Few survive an encounter with them."

"Well, I have. So perhaps, I might be more use to you alive than dead?"

"Perhaps. Make me an offer."

"I could help you make repairs."

"And where would you get the spare parts?" He looked her up and down. "If you had the technology I need, you wouldn't be living like one of these people. You're as stranded as I am."

"So you are stranded." Vicki gave him a smile. "Thank you for confirming that. And, by the sound of things, your time machine's a write-off. That doesn't leave you many options, does it?"

Korsten gritted his teeth, silently.

"I suppose you've tried writing messages in the hope that someone in the future will read them. And no-one has. So you're planning to stick around and terrorise my people and kill them whenever you feel like it."

The man leaned forward until he was almost nose to nose with Vicki.

"Get this into your head," he said. "If I do, there's nothing you can do about it. Do you think even an army of your Bronze Age primitives would inconvenience me?"

With her face troubled, Vicki turned and walked away, gesturing for her handmaidens to follow her.


	2. Chapter 2

The heat on top of the hill was fierce; the rock was uncomfortably warm, and the sun was still beating down. Vicki found herself regretting that she hadn't insisted that they wear hats, never mind what the local customs were. But she had more important things on her mind. She was pretty sure that they hadn't been followed; they'd walked until the cave mouth was out of sight, then returned to the hill by a circuitous route. There were no signs that she'd been followed or that Korsten was aware of her presence. The point now was to keep things that way.

She put her finger to her lips, then pointed at the crack in the rock. Eumelia silently removed the lid from the clay jar she was holding. It was full to the brim with a dark powder, which she poured into the crack.

In turn, the second and third handmaidens did the same, until the powder filled the crack and was heaped up over it. Then Vicki took the fourth jar herself, opened it, and backed slowly away, leaving a trail from the crack as she did so.

Once the last of the powder had been tipped out, Vicki removed the necklace she wore — a simple circle of gold wire, with a gemstone hanging from it. The Eye of Cronos was an ancient heirloom, one of a handful salvaged from Priam's treasure. It was said to possess rare, magical powers, but what made it so important to Vicki at the moment was that it was the nearest thing she had to a convex lens.

She angled the Eye to catch the sun's rays, and concentrate them on the end of the trail of powder she'd laid. It wasn't easy; she'd have preferred a larger, more regular lens, but she'd tried to avoid introducing anachronisms. If, as a result of her actions, the science of optics somehow got established now, she'd destroy known history beyond recognition.

Out of the corner of her ear, she heard the same rustling as before: a snake, sliding across the rocks. Only by the sound of things, this was a very large snake. Unbidden, the story of Korsten's earth demon jumped into her mind.

"Eumelia," she whispered. "Can you hear that?"

Eumelia nodded. Under her tan, she was pale with fear.

"Can you get within sight of the cave mouth, and tell me what you see? Wait. Whatever you do, don't let yourself be seen or heard."

The girl darted off. Vicki turned her attention back to the powder trail, and her improvised lens. Her hand and arm were starting to ache with the effort of keeping the lens in position, and there was no sign of it working. Probably the angle or the focal length needed minor adjustments.

By the time Eumelia returned, she hadn't had any more luck. If Eumelia had looked frightened before, she was terrified now.

"A monster," she stammered. "Like a gigantic snake, with arms, and the eyes of a Gorgon... It was casting about, trying to find our trail. My lady, is this the demon that men have spoken of?"

"I think it could be." Vicki stood up, and put the necklace in the girl's hand. "Take this. Hold it in the sun, so that you see a bright dot on the rock. Like this." She guided Eumelia's arm to the right position. "Now keep that dot on the powder, whatever happens — in particular, whatever you hear. And if you don't see me again, tell my husband that I love him, and that I chose to do this."

She slipped off her shoes, for silence, and her long, embroidered robe, for ease of running. Clad only in a light tunic, she crept cautiously to the edge of the cliff, overlooking the cave mouth.

Below, where she had spoken with Korsten, a black shape was creeping among the rocks. It matched Eumelia's description exactly: snakelike in shape, at least twenty feet long. From the front section of its body, arms and tentacles extended. Several of these were examining the ground where Vicki and her handmaidens had stood, presumably picking up scent tracks.

Vicki considered her options. In the worst case, the creature would follow their trail, and discover that they hadn't gone back to the city, but doubled back and come up here. That would mean, firstly, that she would die, as would her handmaidens. Secondly, the creature would then be free to roam the land. Unless it was a robot, it seemed likely that it was responsible for the disappearances that had been reported. The thing had a hungry look to it.

She looked over her shoulder. A few minutes ago, she'd been willing the trail of powder to catch light. Now, she was desperate for it not to. But she couldn't run back and tell Eumelia to stop; there was too much risk that she'd be noticed. What she had to do was to get the creature back into the cave, or at least close to the entrance.

It took endless minutes, crawling and keeping below the edge of the cliff, for Vicki to get to the spot she wanted. From here, she could see the cave mouth, below her and a little way to the right, and the creature, still gliding about among the rocks, with the same rustling noise that she'd heard earlier.

 _Well,_ she said to herself. _Here goes._

She picked up a stone, rubbed it in her hands to give it her scent, and threw it down in front of the cave mouth. The serpent didn't look round. Like real snakes, its hearing was probably not its strongest point. Vicki's next stone landed a little closer to it, and the next one after that closer still. Then, there was a reaction. The creature lifted its head, and looked this way and that. Vicki ducked behind a rock, longing to see what was happening but knowing that she couldn't let it see her.

There was a rustling sound; the creature was on the move. Vicki glanced over her shoulder, and saw something else. Smoke was rising from where she'd left her handmaidens. Eumelia had got the powder alight at last. There was no alternative now.

Abandoning stealth, Vicki rose to her feet. The creature, down below, had picked up one of the stones she'd thrown, and appeared to be examining it. It had made no move to follow the trail of stones back into the cave; her attempt to deceive it had failed utterly. But she hadn't time to consider that now. She set off at a run, back to where her handmaidens were waiting. Behind her, though she didn't dare look back, she imagined that serpentine body surging up the cliff face, winding this way and that across ledges invisible to the human eye, and finally cresting the top and rushing toward her.

The four girls were still where Vicki had left them. She gestured that they should lie down, behind a slight outcrop of rock. But despite the danger, she couldn't bear not to look for herself. She peered over the rock, in the direction of the cliff edge. The smoke from the powder trail obscured things slightly, but didn't conceal the blunt, heavy head as it rose above the lip of the cliff and stared at her with calculating green eyes.

"I'm sorry," Vicki whispered.

The spark running along the powder trail reached the crack where the first three jars of powder had been emptied, and the hill shook beneath her, as the air was filled with the sound of thunder.

⁂

Comprehensive though Vicki's education had been, by the time she'd left Earth she'd only known that gunpowder was made from charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre. It had been during her travels with the Doctor that she'd learned the correct proportions, and the proper way of making it. She had made sure that there were stocks of the necessary materials in the city, and had spent most of her time over the last couple of days combining them to make the powder. This was knowledge she didn't dare to share with anybody else; black powder, over two thousand years early, would have made lenses look like small beer.

Well, she'd now disposed of the batch she'd made, so that shouldn't cause any historical deviations. At the explosion, she'd ducked down behind the rock, covering her head with her hands. Chips of stone rained down around her, and the air was filled with dust.

She waited for the dust to settle, her heart pounding, ears alert for the first slither that would tell her that the creature had survived. But once the roar of the explosion and the crash of falling rock had faded, there was nothing.

After waiting as long as she dared, she rose to her feet, her tunic now grey with dust. Eumelia, seemingly acting out of a dazed sense of routine, held out the robe she'd doffed earlier, but Vicki waved it away. She did put the shoes on, though; the ground was now covered with sharp fragments of rock.

She wasn't able to look down over the edge from where she'd stood before, because the area of the cliff above the cave mouth had been reduced to a treacherous mass of rubble. When she'd been setting the explosives, she'd wondered whether the amount of black powder she'd been able to scrape together was sufficient for the task in hand, or whether the force of the explosion would be wasted upwards. Her fears had obviously been misplaced.

It was some time later that, with her trembling handmaidens in tow, Vicki reached the base of the cliff. There was no trace of the cave, or of Korsten, but a few feet of the snakelike creature, crushed and broken, protruded from the rubble. Dark liquid, smelling strongly of ammonia, was oozing from the corpse.

"I think someone needs to keep an eye on this place for the next few days," Vicki said. "If you see any of the local farmers, let them know."

There was no reply. She turned to them.

"You can speak, you know," she said. "I won't eat you."

"My lady," Eumelia stammered. "Before today, we had not seen your true power—"

"Eumelia, that wasn't power, it was a trick. Nothing more."

"Forgive me, my lady. But to mortals such as ourselves, even the tricks of a daughter of the gods..." She tailed off.

"I'm not a— Oh, forget it." Vicki could see from Eumelia's awestruck face that it would be useless to argue. "I want all of you to swear that you will tell nobody what you and I did today. About the powder and how we used it. Nobody must know. Do you understand? Nobody!"

One by one, the trembling girls made their promises, doubtless with a new and sincere belief in divine retribution.

"Now I think we need to get back to the city," Vicki said. "Let's go."

She spent the entire journey back in silence, thinking and rethinking the story she'd tell. The girls wouldn't give anything away, but Troilus would demand answers of her — and rightly so. It certainly wouldn't do to claim any credit for herself. If the population at large started believing, as her handmaidens plainly did, she could call down thunder and lightning, she'd never hear the last of it. Best to put it down to divine punishment for Korsten's breach of the sacred rules of hospitality: It certainly wasn't done for a visitor to feed his hosts to his pet monster.

In a way, everything had turned out very simple and straightforward. Korsten, his time machine, and his snake-creature were all buried under the remains of the cliff — and even if it was possible to dig the machine out, it wasn't in working order anyway. Much better to leave them where they were, and concentrate on improving the lives of the Trojans. They were her people, after all.

Firmly suppressing the question of what she'd have done if a _working_ time machine had fallen into her hands, Cressida headed for her home.


End file.
